Critical Care Period is an ACTIVITY GROUP.
A period of time within a Hospital Provider Spell during which a PATIENT receives care in a designated critical care bed.
Excluded from this is care provided to neonates, which is recorded elsewhere. Outreach activity and resuscitation conducted outside designated critical care areas should not be recorded as a Critical Care Period. Also excluded from this is care provided on general wards (except as an occasional non-standard location), A&E, Radiology Departments, labour wards and special care baby units.
A new Critical Care Period starts when the PATIENT is admitted to a critical care location regardless of CRITICAL CARE LEVEL. Repeated admissions to the same unit, transfers to a different critical care location and transfers from a non-standard location to a critical care unit within the same Hospital Provider Spell trigger a new Critical Care Period. A change of Consultant Episode (Hospital Provider) or brief transfers for investigation or treatment do not end the Critical Care Period.
A Critical Care Period ends when the PATIENT is discharged from the critical care location or dies.
Critical care locations are described by CRITICAL CARE UNIT FUNCTION and UNIT BED CONFIGURATION. Critical Care beds may include occasional non-standard locations using a ward area or operating department when conventional critical care beds are not available. Non standard locations may only be recorded if the CRITICAL CARE LEVEL is National Code 02 'Level 2' or 03 'Level 3' and the delivery of care is greater than four hours.
The type of ORGAN SYSTEM SUPPORTED is recorded and the duration of each organ system support is calculated from the ACTIVITY PROPERTY EFFECTIVE DATE and the ACTIVITY PROPERTY END DATE. The ORGAN SUPPORT MAXIMUM is the maximum number of different ORGAN SYSTEMS SUPPORTED on any one day in the Critical Care Period. Each organ system can only be counted once on any calendar day. Both basic and advanced categories cannot be counted at the same time. The range of values for ORGAN SUPPORT MAXIMUM is from 0 to 7.
CRITICAL CARE DISCHARGE READY DATE and CRITICAL CARE DISCHARGE READY TIME are recorded to identify and quantify significant problems in discharging patients from critical care units.
A subset of the Critical Care Minimum Data Set is used to derive Adult Critical Care HRGs. The subset is sent in the following Commissioning Data Set messages:
ADMITTED PATIENT CARE CDS TYPE - BIRTH EPISODE
ADMITTED PATIENT CARE CDS TYPE - DELIVERY EPISODE
ADMITTED PATIENT CARE CDS TYPE - GENERAL EPISODE
A Critical Care Period does not include the following:
a. Surgical and anaesthetic intra-operative care
b. Post-operative care within an operating department except where level 2 or level 3 care are provided for more than 4 hours
c. Cardiac (coronary) Care
d. Imaging procedures
e. Endoscopy procedures
Information recorded for a Critical Care Period includes:
CRITICAL CARE ADMISSION TYPE
CRITICAL CARE DISCHARGE DESTINATION O
CRITICAL CARE DISCHARGE LOCATION O
CRITICAL CARE DISCHARGE STATUS O
CRITICAL CARE SOURCE LOCATION
This supporting information is also known by these names:
| Context | Alias |
|---|---|
| plural | Critical Care Periods |